Twenty-Twenty-Twoo, too

Last year, I wrote that it felt like 2022 was shaping up to be another 2020…. so is 2023

The policy stagnation continues, and it still feels that 2023 itself will also be another 2020. I feel it is appropriate that, as I relaunch my site, I start-off by revisiting this old piece. 

Since 2020, we have been witnessing a drawn-out policy stagnation. We have also been witnessing the gathering of system renewal.

Policy Stagnation & the Weight of the Centralized State

Centralization reached its limitations. While this is obvious to all, is it less obvious to the system. The system will double-down, with increased centralization and suppression of dissent.

In its search for the “greater good”, the “nanny-state” evolves.

I morphs into a “security-state”, a “pharma-state”. In the search for a “green economy” that could only evolve from the ground-up, The central state moves into a top-down “eco state”. It is unable to offer solutions, too impatient to nurture them.

It can only impose mandates.

Regardless of the ideology behind the power, in centralized systems, the "greater good" becomes the good of the system.

Policy Stagnation & the Weight of the Centralized State

It often happened in the past.

In the 8th Century, the “Mutazilites” also aimed for the “greater good”. This Islamic school of thought referred to itself as the “People of Justice and Monotheism” (“التوحيد و العدل أهل”). They espoused the philosophical concepts of “free will”, and strived to combine Greek philosophical traditions with the teachings of Islam.

When they reached power, they no longer aimed for the “greater good”; they focused on the greater good of the Abbasid system that they served. Free Will became an abstract concept; it was their political will that mattered. The “ordeal” (“Mihna”; “المحنه”) dragged on from 833 to 848; dissenters were imprisoned and tortured.

Some chroniclers even state that they crucified their opponents in the name of the greater good. By the end of the 9th Century they had fallen out of favor. Modern states are set on a similar path.

The more grandiose the goal, the greater the damage.

The centralized system retraces the path described by Ibn-Khaldun, whereby a community united by ethnicity or common interest (“العصبيٌة”; or “Assabiya”), relies on a religious or political ideology (“الدٌعوة”; or “Daawa”), to reach power and maintain its hold on it (“المك”; or “Mulk”).

The Daawa is not uniform.

In the United States and Europe, it is a divisive policy pitting oppressed against oppressors.  

In China and Russia, it is a “unifying” policy pitting the nation against invaders.

Al-Mulk

In all counties, a secular “Assabiya” pursues the “greater good” with near-religious fervor.

The “Daawa” co-opts, to its own purposes, very valid needs such as public safety, public health, or sustainability.

As long as they can delivered some economic buffer, the system endures. As the cost builds up, the system weakens. The weakened system does not reform; it doubles-down… until it runs out of runway.

…and there is plenty of runway left out in 2023.